Word: wishfulness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...last weekend; it's only the beginning of the revival of Mark Twain's fantasy, "A Connecticut Yankee." Attempts to streamline the new production and shake off the dust it has acquired have largely failed. Despite some moments of light humor, it oftens becomes so dull that you wish someone would hit you over the head with a bottle of gin and put you out of your misery...
...girl and four men were sentenced to three to 20 years for distributing a pamphlet which attacked President Wilson's policy of intervention in Russia. A Mrs. Clark remarked: "I wish Wilson was in hell, and if I had the power, I would put him there." The court which tried her held that the President could not be in hell unless dead; Mrs. Clark had therefore threatened the President's life and was guilty of sedition...
...what is wrong with the world . . . and ... a philosophically unified program of academic studies . . . that would serve as means. . . . We [ask you to] assure us that none of these apparent implications [of obligatory unity of thought] form any part of your practical intentions." Hutchins answered that he did not wish and had no power to enforce his aim on the University, but when he and his professors finished their interchange of letters, the six were still dissatisfied. They appealed to their colleagues, and 115 signed a petition to the Board of Trustees asking for assurance that Hutchins will not drastically...
...What this country needs is a terrific shaking-up, a war, a devil of an earthquake. But one can't wish that either. Life here is sweet, pleasant. The sky is blue; the mountains, the women are enchanting; the climate, the peace...
...DeVoto then quotes with approval Van Wyck Brooks's diagnosis of what was wrong with much of that writing: "Writers have ceased to be voices of the people. . . . Preponderantly, our literature of the last quarter-century has been the expression of self-conscious intellectuals who do not even wish to be voices of the people. Some of these writers have labored for the people; they have fought valiant fights for social justice. But their perceptions have not been of the people. . . . The literary mind of our time is sick. It has lost its roots in the soil of mankind...